I have DSL internet. Now I just heard ads about a new satellite internet, that is supposed to be much faster than the fastest DSL, up to x3 that fast. Can this be true? it would be great. Where I live there is no cable. Any one has this new thing?

I guess I have not checked this route for a long time but when I did, satellite was plagued by low speed, high cost and spotty service. In checking the prices now, I see the high prices still exists and the speeds are not so great. I would stick with DSL until you get fiber service in your area. By the way, who is offering the satellite service and at what speeds and cost?

In the US, if you don't have FTTH already, it's going to be a long, long, long, long, long wait. Companies would much rather "entice" you into a cellular wireless solution where they can charge you $40-60 a month for 3GB of data transfer rather than laying down new fiber. Good luck with convincing taxpayers that the government should get behind such an effort as well.

AFAIK there are no companies in the US actively rolling out new fiber (except Google, with their recent pilot program in Kansas City- in itself a very experimental venture). Verizon, Frontier, ATT, etc. have all entirely stopped expanding their FTTH efforts.

To be more on topic, a big issue with satellite internet is the latency. You may be able to get (or pay for) good bandwidth speed, but there is a large latency cost associated with relaying all your communications through a satellite. If you are only interested in browsing it should be okay, but latency-sensitive applications like gaming or voice/video chat will be less than ideal.

I'm the same boat, but without the DSL. We endured dialup until we went with a Verizon aircard (usb modem over a cell network) about 4 years ago. We're now using the Verizon 4G 4620L Jetpack and it rocks. Cost is the major downside but since we're not paying a cable bill...

I have a cousin that went with satellite internet which he got during a promotional offer so long as he signed a one year contract. To this day he'll tell you it was one of the worst decisions he's ever made and is now back with dsl.

20DNoob wrote:
I have a cousin that went with satellite internet which he got during a promotional offer so long as he signed a one year contract. To this day he'll tell you it was one of the worst decisions he's ever made and is now back with dsl.

When did your cousin use the satellite?
From the informations I received and obtained from internet as the link I provided above, the new speedy satellite had been available just in the last few WEEKs. It looked like your cousin had the old system, that I never considered.
The uploading of my DSL---I have 2 systems, one provided by ATT----the upload speed of these systems is 0.42 Mbps. The new satellite upload speed is 2Mbps, they claim. They said 3x faster, but if their speed is 2Mbps, it would be 4x faster than my Dsls.

I hope some one just signed up with them in the last few weeks can provide some info.

I had Hughesnet satellite service for three years after I moved to Virginia, because there was no alternative besides dial-up. At that time, they offered four speed/price levels. I started at the bottom, which was at least twice as much money as I'd been paying for DSL in California (Copper.net, by the way - the best customer service I've ever experienced.) I had to go up two levels to get acceptable speed, and I was paying $126 per month (and that was still slower than the DSL I'd had). The speeds they claim are unreal; they even tell you up front that it will vary, and I never saw what they claimed. When DSL became available for me, I jumped on it, and I'm back to being a happy camper. I wouldn't recommend Hughesnet to anyone.

My own experience with internet via an antenna wasn't good. It was many years ago and was a line-of-site connection from a tall building in downtown Boston. Every time the weather was bad the connection was dodgy and sometimes just not there at all. Then my house and 5 others on my street were randomly selected by RCN for a fiber-optic test and we were wired for fiber-optic and suddenly the internet appeared to be on a local hard disk. Amazing. Now we have regular cable from RCN but they are offering fiber-optic with a docsis modem 75 Mbps at $80/month. I'm thinking about it as I like to watch football from Europe.

nugeny wrote:
When did your cousin use the satellite?
From the informations I received and obtained from internet as the link I provided above, the new speedy satellite had been available just in the last few WEEKs. It looked like your cousin had the old system, that I never considered.
The uploading of my DSL---I have 2 systems, one provided by ATT----the upload speed of these systems is 0.42 Mbps. The new satellite upload speed is 2Mbps, they claim. They said 3x faster, but if their speed is 2Mbps, it would be 4x faster than my Dsls.

I hope some one just signed up with them in the last few weeks can provide some info....Show more →

He's in Maryland and used the same provider as Ernie did maybe two years ago. The best part was whenever he was looking online for something my phone got the results faster than he could on his computer.

I just checked and got a 1.68 Mbps download from Seattle to Indiana. Yes, that's 1.68 mega *bits* per second on Comcast.

The rest of the country is 25mega bits +.

My daughter uses a verizon(?) card modem, and I hate it. But, she is outside city limits and can't get cable.
I just heard about a mall shooting near Portland, and that may be tying up the servers in the area.

This I just found out about. What a travesty as the fiber speed is unbelievable. I pay for 75/35 Mbps service from Verizon and usually get that speed with my wireless connections in my house. I could never go back to cable or DSL.

We've had Expede satellite service (the improved WildBlue) since March. We're really happy with it. Our other choice in rural western WI was CenturyLink DSL that didn't have to many fans that I could find. SpeedTest shows 9.75 Mbps download, 2.33 Mbps upload with 678 ms latency. We're not trying to play games, so the high latency doesn't affect us that we notice. Our bandwidth is capped at 10 Gb per month and the service costs us about $55 per month.

We've had Expede satellite service (the improved WildBlue) since March. We're really happy with it. Our other choice in rural western WI was CenturyLink DSL that didn't have to many fans that I could find. SpeedTest shows 9.75 Mbps download, 2.33 Mbps upload with 678 ms latency. We're not trying to play games, so the high latency doesn't affect us that we notice. Our bandwidth is capped at 10 Gb per month and the service costs us about $55 per month.